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Uniting under the principle everyone shares, individual liberty, is the only way to achieve meaningful and comprehensive reform. Of course, this means rejecting the drug war as a whole and not specific parts of it.

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we have literally everything we need (data, history, and as the good kap’n continues to point out, we have the economics behind us) to absolutely crush prohibition — everything, apparently, except the balls to actually try doing it.

what bothers me most about idiot moves like the latest from mpp is that it completely wastes what little resources we have in the name of “accomplishing” astoundingly little.

i believe we need to go for it all and demand unconditional surrender, whilst the “go slow” wagon is busying themselves over what color the tablecloths on the negotiating tables should be.

they have no strategy for getting the job done — and it does irk me to no end that when i point that out i am asked “well, where’s yours?” believe me, i am working on it — i am working as hard and as fast as i can to get what we need in place, and more importantly to convince people to be brave enough to commit to getting it done. also, i guess i could have given you a better link to better understand where i’m coming from: http://www.briancbennett.com/strategy/overview.htm

i don’t have a $6 million budget (instead i’ve sacrificed my career, my life savings and at least a half million dollars in lost wages/retirement etc to do this work), and to the best of my recollection have neither anointed myself nor been appointed by anyone else as the “leader.” so when i hear someone make the claim that they are the “leaders” i want everyone in dpr to understand why that is not true.

the problem is not so much in believing that the piecemeal approach will “work” — instead it is that such an approach will take far too long (we truly will all be dead by then), and that, more importantly, it is not at all necessary. there are literally tens of thousands of drug laws on the books — you really want to try changing one of them at a time? oops, one other problem — we get one law changed, and they write five more. it is truly a fool’s errand.

taking a purely political approach at this point in time is extremely wasteful — what we need to be doing at the moment is focusing our attention on educating our fellow citizens that we need to jettison the entire drug war enterprise. then, and only then, will we be in a position to effectively make the political maneuvers to hammer the final nail in the coffin.

sure, everyone has their own personal reasons for getting involved, and their own pet aspects of the issues — but everyone needs to put their self-interests into the bigger picture.

that is one reason why i continue to hammer people on the idea that this is all about individual liberty — period. and yes, the gays and all other disenfranchised groups in our nation are really fighting the same battle — that’s what i keep saying.

however, when i see potheads who are quite content with continuing to fuck over the users of other drugs (not to mention whatever hangups they have about other personal behaviors that do not concern them), i tend to get a little hot under the collar.

perhaps i am a bit more intense than most in these matters in part because i actually put my life on the line directly for 24 years in the name of defending our vaunted principles — i fully understand what the words “liberty” and “equality” really mean.

and i swore i would defend those principles for all of us at any cost.

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I understand that the LEAP approach is the way to go. And that’s what I’m pushing. However, I also believe that having other things going on simultaneously to soften things up helps us. I get the idea that having all the resources of all the groups focused on the one approach will make the one approach stronger. But I don’t really see that happening. Lots of people have different interests and they want to see their money work in that way. I would imagine that there are other rights areas (gay rights, civil rights, etc.) that are also really fighting the same equality fight we are, and maybe we could be more powerful by having all the money and people focused on equality. But the gay rights folks aren’t likely to give us their money and time, nor are we likely to do the reverse, even though most of us probably support what the other is doing.

No, I would not defend leaving all of the carnage in place in the name of getting another “medical” marijuana state. But I would defend getting another “medical” marijuana state if I thought that would help us move closer to getting rid of the carnage, and as long as that was not the only thing we were doing.

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If California tries to regulate and tax marijuana to get the market under control and the feds come in disrupting their system, can the state, or a resident of that state, suit the federal government using an “unreasonable burden” argument?

For example, I don’t use marijuana but I’m tired of seeing my communities flooded with street dealers who use the marijuana market to push hard drugs like heroin and meth, thereby, significantly increasing the burden of the marijuana market that wouldn’t exist if it was strictly regulated and taxed. Not to mention the current marijuana market is allowed to foster huge crime syndicates, i.e. 60% percent of drug cartel revenue comes from the marijuana market. Don’t I have a right to raise a family without drug dealers shooting up my community and selling drugs to my children in school.

Would this “unreasonable burden” argument make a legitimate Supreme Court case?

I would like to see more court cases challenging marijuana prohibition from different angles other than the “right to use” argument. It seems that the civil rights movement didn’t really take off until 1950′s Brown Vs. Board of Education ruling which paved the way to ending racial segregation in this country. I think a good well-built court case based on “my right to live in peace” argument could really knock a blow to marijuana prohibition.

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Look around , theres a change a coming. It may not be the change you want or even I want but it happening. I dont like the loss of rights , invasion of privacy, all the death and carnage any better than anyone else. Thats the point no one likes this shit, thats way it will change.

Can you come up with anything better than whats happening now? A better way to end this insane drug war other than just stating end it? Wish it was that easy man! If that was the case i would end all the bullshit going on in governemt …Period!

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at any rate, the failure to call for the end of it all necessitates being comfortable about keeping the vast majority of it in place.

so give it a whirl: let’s hear how you would defend leaving all of the carnage in place in the name of getting another “medical” marijuana state.

can’t do it? yeah, me neither. that’s why i say it all has to go.

so does LEAP. we all need to do what LEAP is doing — oh wait, i keep saying that too.

does repetition make it more clear?

send your money to LEAP. do what the LEAP guys are doing (hint: it ain’t medical pot initiatives — they say end the whole fucking enterprise of drug war)

send your money to LEAP. do what the LEAP guys are doing (hint: it ain’t medical pot initiatives — they say end the whole fucking enterprise of drug war)

send your money to LEAP. do what the LEAP guys are doing (hint: it ain’t medical pot initiatives — they say end the whole fucking enterprise of drug war)

three times enough?

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Enough! If we want to gather the numbers we require to accomplish the task, we first need to focus our attention on the fact that the core reason to end the drug war is simply because it is completely un-American to turn in your neighbor for doing things directly to only himself. Period. We need to demand (and practice) equality for all.

Maybe I’m dense, but I don’t understand. What are you proposing we do, exactly? Run an ad saying “We demand equality for all”?

This appears to be an underpants gnome approach.

Step 1. Demand equality for all
Step 2. ???
Step 3. Achieve equality for all

Really, I have heard you complain ad nauseam about us not seeing the big picture and wasting our time on incremental things, but I still don’t understand what you want us to do, specifically, and why you think it would work.

I feel that I talk about the big picture (and so do all the other reformers) — sure, we talk about medical marijuana, but we also talk about all the heinous things you mention in that piece. SWAT raids, accidental deaths, “let’s pee for freedom,” etc. Very few of us focus solely on medical marijuana, or even just marijuana.

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